02/12/2016

Lying despite telling the truth

In their inspiring paper, Angelo and John Turri (Cognition 2015; Post on this blog) presented empirical evidence for the claim that lying requires falsity (“objective view”). In our paper, we argue that the presented evidence might be consistent with the standard subjective view (not requiring falsity) if conversational pragmatics is taken into account (Paper). We used the same scenario as Turri and Turri and replicated, amongst others, their finding of their second Experiment. Here is the scenario, the question mode, and the results:

Jacob’s friend Mary recently posted information on the internet that will alert the public to serious government corruption. Soon some federal agents visit Jacob and ask where Mary is in order to detain her. Jacob thinks that Mary is at her brother’s house, so he tells the agents, ‘‘She is at the grocery store.’’ In fact, Mary is at the grocery store.

Choose the option that better describes Jacob in the story. When Jacob spoke to the agents about Mary’s location:

He tried to tell a lie but failed to tell a lie.: 78%He tried to tell a lie and succeeded in telling a lie: 22%

We thought, however, that splitting up the answers into a trying- and a result-part might have led subjects to conclude that the questions were not merely about the question of whether Jacob lied but about some additional relevant component of the story, namely the fact that what Jacob said turned out to be true although he intended the statement to be objectively false. To block this potential pragmatic re-interpretation of the response options, we added one additional part in which it was stated that what was said turned out to be true. Here is the modified question mode and the results:

Choose the option that better describes Jacob in the story. When Jacob spoke to the agents about Mary’s location:

He tried to tell a lie but failed to tell a lie because what he said turned out to be true: 28%He tried to tell a lie and succeeded in telling a lie although what he said turned out to be true: 72%

Due to this finding (and others) we argue that the subjective view might fit well with most people’s intuitions about the concept of lying after all.

Comments

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Hello Alex,

Congratulations to you and your co-authors on getting this paper accepted at Cognition and thanks for your contribution to this research question! I like the idea of taking a step back and re-examining the potential consequences of experimental stimuli or procedures in earlier research.

Having read the paper, I had a question about the design of Experiment 1. In particular, I was wondering how the between-subjects design allowed you to rule out the potential confound of blame validation driving results on the lie attribution.

Thank you for your kind and encouraging words!
Regarding your question: In our first experiment we wanted to empirically test your plausible suggestion that the results of your first experiment (the majority of subjects choosing the subjective option) might be due to subject’s urge to blame the agent for trying to deceive the federal agents. So, in addition to your original scenario, we tested a scenario in which lying clearly seemed to be the right thing to do (- and not blameworthy; there was a merciless dictator who threatened to torture Jacob’s friend Mary). One finding was that in the original scenario as well as in the dictator version most subjects judged that Jacob was not to blame, another finding was that the percentage of subjects not wanting to blame Jacob was significantly higher in the dictator condition. Hence, we knew that these two scenarios differ with regards to the agent’s blameworthiness. We then tested whether this difference in blameworthiness had an influence on subjects ‘ratings of lying. We did not detect a difference: In both scenarios the majority of subjects judged that Jacob was lying. This finding, together with the finding that most subjects did not think that Jacob’s behavior was blameworthy, we took as indicating that subjects’ endorsing of the subjective option cannot be explained by subjects’ urge to blame Jacob.
I hope I got your question right.

Yes, that directly addressed my question, thank you. It aligns with how I interpreted the paper, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking something.

One worry we had about our initial studies was that an up-or-down lie attribution, all on its own, might be used as an opportunity to express disapproval of dishonesty or avoid appearing to condone or excuse dishonesty. How does presenting a different group of people with a blame attribution allow one to diagnose whether this happens to the people presented with the up-or-down lie attribution?

There are at least two different aspects to that more general question (the first of which seems more important).

First, granting that the two scenarios differ in the agent's blameworthiness, what does this tell us about how participants interpret the implications of answering "no" to the up-or-down lie attribution?

Second, for each story, most people said Jacob was not to blame, though the majority was stronger for one story than the other. You say that this then allowed for a "test" of whether "the difference in blameworthiness had an influence on subjects‘ ratings of lying." I can see how this might work for a within-subjects comparison. But what test supports this conclusion for a between-subjects comparison?

Thank you for your response!
Our goal was to empirically test your claim that people try to express blame when judging whether an assertion is a lie. We chose a between-subjects design because in our view this is the cleaner test. Within-subjects designs always have the problem of possible carry-over effect and demand characteristics. In our between-subjects experiment we randomly assigned subjects to conditions. So if subjects in condition A judge a lie as more or less blameworthy, the assumption is that subjects in Condition B who are asked about the lies would have similarly evaluated the lies as subjects in condition A. This inference is statistically warranted because of the random assignments of subjects to conditions. Of course, one could also run the experiment as a within-subject study. Although we think a between-subjects study is cleaner, we don’t expect any differences in this particular case. It would, however, certainly be a worthwhile project. Note that in our later experiments we followed up on your advice to use different test questions that are not potentially contaminated by blame judgments or perspective taking (we used your test question and just added the fact that what Jacob said turned out to be true).

You write, "If subjects in condition A judge a lie as more or less blameworthy, the assumption is that subjects in Condition B who are asked about the lies would have similarly evaluated the lies as subjects in condition A. This inference is statistically warranted because of the random assignments of subjects to conditions." That is all true. However, it is not directly informative regarding the perceived implications of answering "no" to the up-or-down lie attribution. I'm not saying that the data are irrelevant, but they do not, as is concluded in the paper, "rule out" interpretations of what the implications are.